Veterans Day and the 25th Anniversary of the Viet Nam Memorial
Not Just A Black Slash in the Earth: A Veteran's Personal Thoughts
By: Mark Favermann - Nov 11, 2007
I recently heard in a report on National Public Radio that this was the 25th Anniversary of the unveiling of the Viet Nam War Memorial. It reminded me that it was 35 years since I was discharged form the US Army. It started me to think about things that I have mentally put aside.
The year 1970 was not a very good year for me or nearly anybody else. Four students were killed at Kent State University in Ohio. The Viet Nam War was protested and defended vehemently. Hippies became radicals. The Summer of Love of a few short years before had transformed into years of youthful outrage. There were marches on Washington that often turned violent and even bloody. Remember, Richard Nixon was in the White House. Body bags arrived daily at various Air Force bases. Student protests on campuses grew like California wildfires. College campuses were shut down early. And I was drafted into the United States Army.
It is an understatement to say that the Viet Nam War was a nearly catastrophic time in our nation's history. Its effect has been not just lingering, but at times even pervasive. It affected a lot of us in many strange ways. It was a time of turmoil. It was a time of great personal inner turmoil for me with constant agitation and turmoil for our country. Having been a lucky first draft lottery winner, I was conscripted out of graduate school at the University of Virginia, and served in the Army until 1972.
My army adventures were not terribly distinguished or exciting. Until recently, I had repressed much of the experience. In some cases, I can now smile about them. I remember my mother showing little emotion when my parents dropped me off at the federal building to be shipped out to Boot Camp. Later, I learned that she was on Valium to deaden her over wrought feelings. My WWII vet dad shook my hand stoically to say good-bye. I was convinced that I was going to die. Perhaps, he was as well.
A husband of a second cousin was killed during the Korean War leaving a young widow with two small sons. Most of my other extended family members had been deferred or were serving in the National Guard. Unlike George W. Bush's parents, my parents either didn't believe in using pull or didn't have enough to get me into a reserve unit. Conscientious objectors' whole families had their photographs put in our local papers. Dignity didn't allow that. The quack allergist that I had been going to for the previous six years wouldn't or couldn't write a letter saying that I was medically deferred. So, I was convinced that I was somehow marked to be sacrificed.
Boot camp was a somewhat dreamlike, sadistic Boy Scout camp on steroids. I had spent weeks in the woods as a boy scout during summers of my pre-adolescence. So marches and bivouacs were nothing special. However, having my head shaved and wearing a pickle suit was not an image burnisher. This was to break us down. Only a few of us were college educated. So, after evening chow, there was not much literary or philosophical discussion with the hillbillies, high school dropouts, and gang-bangers. By the way, all the guys from Detroit worked in the tool and die industry. No wonder car manufacturing went downhill. There was a lot of anger around with the recruits and the drill sergeants. I tried to avoid fistfights and excess KP (kitchen duties). However, I got extremely good at scouring large pots and pans, and one of my front teeth got a little chipped. I am sure that several of my platoon and even a few noncommissioned officers never made it back from Viet Nam.
Though stateside during my whole enlistment period, the military experience for me was similar to being stuck in a minimum-security jail or at least in a work release program. The constant possibility of being sent to Viet Nam hung like the sword of Damocles over my head. The "jail" metaphor refers to the restrictive nature of it all and my lack of ability to question authority in any way. Protesting was punishable. So, I somehow learned to keep my mouth shut, and do what I was told, when I was told. I made no lasting friendships in the army.
When my time was up, I went back to graduate school three weeks later. Talk about a strange almost cosmic shift—US Army and then to Harvard University's Graduate School of Design! There were a few other veterans there as well. One in particular was much angrier than I was. He had been a contentious objector who was made a battlefield medic. I think that I would have been more sympathetic to him if he hadn't been so self-righteous and arrogant. Oh well. He went on to be an urban politics reporter for the Boston Globe and eventually The Washington Post. Where is he now when we really need him?
The parallels between the current war(s), in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Viet Nam are many. However, the major difference is that the soldiers have been held blameless this time. This is right. They are being honored when they return. Viet Nam soldiers were never acknowledged and generally demonized by most who didn't serve. Odd, because the vast majority of the Viet Nam soldiers were all drafted while 100% of today's soldiers are volunteers. Many of the newly returning soldiers are damaged in various ways. Will the US government care for them properly?
Over the years, I have had a number of awkward incidents with so-called liberal thinking people who should have known or acted better over having served in the Army. These were not discussions based in profiles in courage. Almost all of these folks got out of it by a deferment (like Veep Dick Cheney) or were women. As recently as a year ago, I had some misdirected social liberal ask me why I didn't escape to Canada. I have often asked, " How come Baby Boomer feminists never requested equal access to the draft?"
Thinking back on the Viet Nam War Memorial (which was dedicated 25 years ago this month), many thoughts go through my mind. When the requests for proposals (RFQ) came out to create a Viet Nam War Memorial, I thought that it was too soon after the events to have an appropriate memorial. I was wrong. I also felt that it was true of 9/11 as well, but I was apparently right about that one. Of course, the great irony was that a young Asian-American woman, Maya Lin, got to design a memorial about the controversial Asian-American conflict. The design, an exercise in an undergraduate design course at Yale, was rather rough, but clearly on target. Ironic symbolism transformed into iconic metaphor.
With premeditation or not the Viet Nam Memorial uses ambiguity, understatement, reversal of expectations and even self-reflection. It is a dark gash in the earth that omits traditional memorial rhetorical symbols and forms. It is one of the greatest, most powerful, evocative remembrance elements. Unfortunately, politically connected Philistines insisted on including figurative statues as accessory elements. One is of three male soldiers; the other is of female nurses. Very quaint and rather pathetically retro, these are in the tradition of the Union and Confederate statues all over small town America. Small mindedness seems to get involved in anything dealing with recent history. Aesthetics are not a course at any of the military academies as far as I know. Thankfully, they are diminished by the greatness of "the Wall."
Perhaps only two great films, "Apocalypse Now" and "The Deerhunter" and two very good ones, "Platoon" and "Full Metal Jacket" were produced about the Viet Nam War. "From Here to Eternity" to "Casablanca" to "Schindler's List" to "Saving Private Ryan" and literally scores of other excellent films in between have been produced about WWII. So, I am rather pissed off that Ken Burns spent so much time and great resources on his PBS series "The War." Nothing comparable has been done on the Viet Nam War. It is past the time that this should have happened. No courage or stomach for it apparently exists in Hollywood.
Since 1972, Veterans Day has always been a sad, pensive day for me. Like many other Viet Nam era veterans I have many reasons.